Meet me in the stars (I'll trade you my heartbeat)
by FallingNarwhals
Summary: Short stories in universe that needs saving, an immortal halfa that just wants a purpose again, and five humans that have the stars in their eyes. May become ShiroxMatt in later chapters. No particular order of things.
1. Chapter 1

It had been six hundred years since Danny Fenton first faked his death when he realized he wasn't ageing. He looked to be in his early twenties, but people who first meet him swear that his eyes are much older than that. When he isn't focused on a task they stare ahead, dim in the light and that his mind is a million light years away.

Then he blinks, and he's back. He does his task dutifully and perfectly, slowly climbs the ranks in the Galaxy Garrison to a teaching assistant, and catches three of his favorite students on the roof one night, looking for aliens.

He goes along with them when the alien ship crashed into the desert because fuck, he's been looking for aliens for six hundred motherfucking years and he ain't gonna follow commands when he was so close. Pidge is able to hack quickly into the cameras and he feels a surge of pride for them.

When Lance and the kid that Lance called "Keith" had run out of the pop-up tent with his old instructor Shiro in their arms, he instantly knows that he won't be coming back to the Garrison for a while. Stealing a technical prisoner from the government tends to get you recognized for a few years.

Shiro recognizes him when he wakes up the next day, and Keith talks about the ruins inside the cave systems. Danny remembers that this place used to be uninhabited for years back before he died, that it's logical that ruins seemingly made by aliens wouldn't have been discovered for a while.

When they find the lion Danny feels a surge of energy, energy that hasn't touched humans before.

Lance can't fly in simulators, but in this lion he doesn't fly. It's like the ship is a part of him as he dodges the lasers from an alien warship (Aliens! Aliens are real!) and he feels so damn proud of this kid. He's flying a ship that was made for aliens and doing it perfectly.

When they go through the portal that feels like its unstable, he panics a little and may have pooled a little bit of ectoplasm into his hands, ready to surround these kids in a shield if this was a trap, but then they reach the end and a beautiful planet is in their sights, complete with a beautiful castle.

He waved off the kid's pesters of "what the fuck was that green shit mr fenton'' and shiro's "danny what the fuck" saying he'll explain it later.

When he starts floating, which seems more natural in this ever so slightly heavier gravity, he laughs at the shriek from the other kids and smiles. "Not now, let's go explore this alien castle!"

They all think he's a bit too excited. They follow him anyway. Whatever Danny is, they'll rather have him in front of them so he could protect them. This was Danny who gave the students contraband candy and wears pink socks under his crisp uniform, who Shiro had to give a detention to once because he beat up someone who was badmouthing ghosts.

Ghosts. Shiro's eyes widen as they walk down the steps of the alien castle.

Danny was a ghost.

When Allura and Coran fell out of their pods, it was Danny who assured them that they were alright and explained what was going on easily. And explained to everyone what he was.

A half ghost. Pidge excitedly went into several technical terms and Hunk followed shortly after, grabbing his hands and admiring the structure and being way more interested in a ghost then the aliens that were rather confused and puzzled until Danny started floating again.

He didn't get a lion, but he didn't take it personally. His powers, aging in his human body like wine for six hundred years, were more than powerful enough to almost match the lions. He could help in his own way.

He finds some spare paladin armor and it changes when he finally transforms, the metal tingling with new ectoplasm and a new technology.

His eyes were not dull anymore. He had a new purpose in his long life and he was going to do his damn best to save the universe.


	2. Chapter 2

There was times when Danny Fenton (or Pine, Wood, Smith, White, the dozens of other last names he went by to avoid the government on his ass but Fenton was a personal favorite) hated his tendency to avoid injuries or heal like a piece of mold. Because when he got his arm cut it sewed itself back together almost instantly, leaving a thin white scar that criss crossed his rather pale skin and left a gaping hole in his mismatched armor.

It meant that he didn't have to use the cryopods often, which was a good thing. Coran and Lance swore by the rule "You sleep in it you clean it" and although it was such a small thing it really made the team smile when Lance joked about it.

It meant that he had to watch his teammates get shoved in when their suits shorted out and electrocuted them and he had to look at the burn wounds on Pidge's small body (they looked so similar to his own, the first ones he ever got more than six hundred years ago) and Pidge was so small, their arms too thin, he wondered if Jazz or his friends ever felt the same way.

These kids (Shiro was a kid too, twenty something years is nothing to six hundred and eleven) had destiny thrust upon them before they were ready, and weren't even old enough to quite process it.

Pidge tended to roll with punches and they were so focused on finding their family that they never really thought about the obscurity of the situation they were in.

Keith was the same, but Danny couldn't guess his goals. He knew that he slept with a knife under his pillow and he doesn't want to know what made a kid like him feel he had to do that on a ship full of his teammates and mice.

Hunk just wanted everyone to be happy, even if that meant sacrificing his own happiness. He tended to take one too many shots that the other lions could have handled, and that over protectiveness made him a raging fire. But he to didn't want this. He wanted to go home, but that meant defeating a ten thousand year old army.

Lance was always one of his favorite students. That came to be when he caught him sneaking outside to get better reception to talk to his family, and denied having tear tracks on his face when Danny "caught" him after he hung up.

Lance didn't want to be here either, and yet here he was, the paladin that spent the most time in the cryopod because he was so goddamned selfless.

It was quite without them. It was a constant chatter, much like Danny's years passing by in nothing more than a blink that you never seemed to miss until it was gone.

(And then you had to change your identity, the last name, learn a new language that popped up in the past two hundred years, shave half of your head.)

Shiro had just as many scars as Danny did. If he had gone back in time and took a look at the Shiro that taught him how to fly a hoversail the differences would be comical. The Instructor Shirogane then was a nerd, who was thin and although good looking looked like he spent more time studying than eating.

The Shiro now got colds often because that scar went right through his sinus and had several huge claw marks on his back and tiny, thin scars on his wrist and the inside of his elbow that looked like injection needles that were designed to hurt.

And he was missing an arm. That was a big change.

It glowed and killed Galra and melted metal like ectoplasm and once when Pidge painted his nails it burnt off and smelled disgusting.

(he was standing here now, in the middle of the room with his teammates in cyropods, picking at the chipped nail polish now.)

(Hunk made it using the ingredients in the kitchen, it was supposed to be a sauce of some sort but Pidge put it on their nails and it was just like human nail polish.)

(Sam loved to paint his and Tucker's nails.)

He jumped when a pale hand covered in faint blue lines gently pressed on his shoulder, but relaxed when he saw the rather intimidating mustache.

"Don't blame yourself for this, Danny."

(You knew Coran was serious when he used your name rather then your number by height.)

Danny smiled, but it didn't cover the sadness in his eyes. "Thought it was number two?"

(Danny always used humor as a cover, no matter what last name or haircut or slight facial change.)

"I was the same way when the paladins of old got hurt. Alfor was so reckless, he tended to get stabbed more often than I preferred. Thought he could just pop into the pod afterwards. Sometimes he gave up his spot to a refugee while he was bleeding out on the medical room floor." Coran chuckled.

"I hate the pods."

That made Coran pause. "And why is that?"

"Because I know what near instant healing feels like on a human," Danny said, holding up his forearm and pushing back the sleeve to reveal a thin scar that wrapped around his arm, decorated by many others. "On a human you could get stabbed. When you get healed you're still tired because you just felt your organs slip out of your body and a knife in your brain but you're fully healed so you still need to fight. Humans aren't robots."

"I see," Coran said softly. "You're afraid of overworking them."

"And traumatizing them. Pidge is like, an infant compared to us."

"That much so. Human aging is so odd."

They stood in a comfortable silence, the faint hum of the pods barely audible, even to Danny's ears.

He hated seeing his new friends get hurt, and being able to do nothing about it. But he was content to wait it out and talk to Coran while these alien machines put his team back together again.


End file.
